The Sioux Falls City Council voted to allow the renewal of a liquor license for Wiley’s Tavern in downtown Sioux Falls after more than a half-hour of debate.

City Councilors Greg Neitzert, Theresa Stehly, and Pat Starr visited the popular downtown bar on Friday amid their concerns about the disproportionate calls to Police. They shared their stories, and questioned bar officials about the business and security practices. The Councilors said it was never their intention to pull the bar’s liquor license, but they wanted to use the forum to discuss the bar’s practice of serving patrons alcohol even after they appear intoxicated.

Though councilors Kiley, Erpenbach and Mayor Huether felt the debate wasn’t necessary, I think if a bar has 165 police calls in 9 months, we should be very concerned. Mr. Duncan, the bar’s attorney argued that they get 5x more police calls because they do 5x more business then competing bars. What concerns me more then the obvious over serving is the cost to taxpayers. Let’s say each police call costs us at a minimum $100 a pop, that is $16,500 of tax dollars spent on a bar making loads of money over serving people. How are we making that money back. We are not.

Councilor Michelle Erpenbach called the entire debate an “embarrassment”.

Councilors Stehly, Starr and Neitzert pointed out they were not embarrassed for doing due diligence. Michelle should be embarrassed that while she has been on council she hasn’t done any due diligence. Greg went on to say it was the duty of the city council to review a bar (which is a public place) that has that volume of calls before approving a license;

“The question is why so many police calls?” asked Neitzert.

Pat Starr was also disappointed that there would be no public input and got into with the mayor after stopping the roll call vote by saying ‘Point of Order’.

After a lengthy debate, the Council voted 7-1 to renew the Wiley’s liquor license. Councilor Pat Starr was the lone “no” vote.

The debate ended on a testy exchange between Mayor Mike Huether and Councilor Pat Starr, who wanted to take public input on the matter, but Mayor Huether called for a roll call vote.

The mayor told Pat he has been doing this for 7 years and doesn’t allow public input. Pat told him he disagreed. The mayor hates it when things get ‘messy’ because it makes him look bad. You look bad ‘High Crimes’ Mike because you are neglecting to address crime in our city. I applaud any city councilor that is trying to get a handle on our ‘high crime’ city.

On a separate note, I am also concerned about taxpayers when it comes to Wiley’s hiring off-duty police to be security. The starting pay for officers in Sioux Falls is $49,000 a year. Do they need a part-time job? And if so, should they be running security? I also question how many of these security officers leave Wiley’s at 3 AM after a stressful night, then report to patrol our streets the next morning. How can they do their #1 job if they may be tired and stressed from their part-time job? While I don’t take issue with them having a second job or even their own business on the side, it should be prohibited that they work in a high stress security position. Working for the public’s safety should be their #1 priority.

“One of the options is to allow the Glory House to expand. The Glory House is just adjacent to this piece of property,” Starr said.

The Glory House, which helps former inmates find jobs to get back on their feet and transition back into society, is already working with a developer to tear down the old building and construct 50 to 75 affordable housing units here.

“Over 80% of the people who graduate from the Glory House have full time jobs, what they’re having difficulties with is being able to find a place to live,” Starr said.

“We’re not in the land speculating business, we’re in the human services business as far as I’m concerned,” Starr said.

As I said last night, this is truly a ‘value’ issue for taxpayers. By keeping former ex-cons out of jail, we save the taxpayers money, a lot of money. It only makes sense to sell them the property. Even Erpenbach nodded her head at me in agreement while speaking of the issue. I think this will get a majority of the council to approve this sale. Ironically, while everyone is throwing Stehly under the bus, her and Starr were the first to look into this issue.

At Large Sioux Falls City Council member Theresa Stehly on the push for more Neighborhood Watch programs prior to the Mayor’s questionable bad neighbor presser on June 22, 2016.

Theresa wants to encourage a spirit of kindness, respect and support for all the citizens of Sioux Falls. Expanding the project nice program to a city wide clean-up day would be one step to help all the citizens with tax dollars. Other communities like Fargo and Brookings do it and so can we.

We can work together to foster a helpful loving community for all citizens . The neighborhood watch program has been a fabulous tool for her area for the past 20 years.

Theresa Stehly is out in the community encouraging neighbors to look out for neighbors to help when and where needed.

In the latest episode of Greg Belfrage’s Mayoral blab fest, once again, Mike is in complete denial of the rising violent crime rate in our city and blows it off as a result of fast growth, meth and alcohol use and mental illness. Huh? We will get to that in a moment.

But before all the talk about locking up your car and crime, the mayor told Smello radio listeners that we have ALWAYS paid for infrastructure upgrades to sewer and water from the enterprise funds.

Now I think he is just lying for the fun of it.

He also thanked councilors Anderson and Karsky for getting the EC built and Snowgates tested, then mumbled something about struggling with Jamison and Staggers.

But back to crime. While it should be NO surprise the chief denier is in denial over our soaring crime rates, his comment about blaming the mentally ill for this rise in crime is neither productive OR truthful.

many Sioux Falls crimes stem from drug and alcohol abuse, as well as mental illness.

The city is going to combat each of these issues? I know it’s illegal to be drunk or high walking down the street, but now it’s going to attract attention from city officials if you have a mental health issue and dare to go out in public?

I guess the county jail had better stock up on cots and plan on at least two people per cell when there’s a concert at the event center, the city is going to start rounding up not only the homeless, but alcoholics, drug addicts, and people with mental health issues too.

So while the state has formed a task force to ensure people with mental illness get better treatment than they do now, and hopefully spend less time in South Dakota’s criminal justice system, once again the Sioux Falls Mayor knows better and instead has preemptively decided that people with mental health issues are criminals and a matter of public concern. Hello ACLU?

I’ve been appointed to the Minnehaha County Commission’s Criminal Justice Planning Committee. We haven’t been notified yet when the meetings will start. However, I’d appreciate any advice or suggestions anyone has regarding how to improve things at the county level. There was an article in the 2/10 Argus on page 3A, “County to update juvenile detention policies, procedures.” Some federal consultants already did a review of the system and presented the county with a 64-page report. The public can access this report at www.minnehahacounty.org, then click on Departments, scroll down and click on Sheriff, then, on the left side under Department Information, click on Jail and Justice System Assessment. The entire report isn’t available yet; the sheriff’s office is working on technical issues as only the first page of the report shows up.

As identified in the Argus article, the committee will carry out a comprehensive review of Minnehaha County’s corrections facilities and future needs which is driven by several of Sheriff Mike Milstead’s goals which include:

-ensuring the county’s regional jail is used to house only inmates that need to be in secure detention

-replacing a two-decades-old Community Corrections Center that is on the point of outliving its usefulness

-applying, on a widespread basis, alternatives to incarceration such as electronic monitoring to free up jail beds for serious offenders and to keep low-risk inmates in the community where they have a better chance to become productive citizens.

Two vehicles and a garage were found on fire early Sunday in an area north of downtown that has been plagued by vehicle and garage fires.

Sioux Falls Fire Rescue responded at 2:30 a.m. to a reported vehicle fire near a building at 1200 N. Dakota Ave. Later, a garage fire was extinguished at 1220 N. Main Ave.

An Oct. 8 article in the Argus Leader noted that firefighters had responded to the same neighborhood southeast of Minnesota Avenue and Russell Street at least seven times in six weeks for car or garage fires.

The scary part about a pyromaniac is that they progress from starting small fires to much bigger fires, sometimes resulting in harm or death. They are also known to be younger;

Individual factors that can lead to pyromania mainly deal with personal issues in someones life. This category includes adolescents who have committed crimes in the past. For example, 19% of adolescents suffering from pyromania have been charged with vandalism and 18% are nonviolent sexual offenders. Other causes may include the seeking of attention from authorities or parents and resolving social issues such as bullying or lack of friends (Frey 2001). Another cause may be that the patient is subconsciously seeking revenge for something that has occurred in the past (Oliver).

Usually I would let the SF Fire Department and SF police department solve this all on their lonesomes, but we should all keep an eye out for this perp, it is only going to get worse until they are caught. I also think the FD and PD need to do a better job of informing the public about what someone like this is capable of AND the warning signs if they think they are living with someone like this.

With surveillance video rolling, a young man in plain clothes robbed a Sioux Falls casino at knife-point Wednesday night, forcing the 60-year-old clerk through the business by her neck.

The crime at Paradise Casino was the 21st business robbery of the year in the city, one shy of the total for all of last year. Video lottery casinos have accounted for about half of those.

Almost one a week! WOO-HOO! I have been kind of disappointed though, there hasn’t been one in my neighborhood for awhile. I love it when investigators yell at me and tell me to mind my own business.

Clemens encouraged casino managers to do what Paradise did: Lock the doors at night and leave it up to employees to let customers inside. He said similar strategies saved two casinos from being robbed earlier this year when would-be robbers showed up at locked doors.

Actually the first solution would be to install ATM’s in the casinos that dispense winnings from scanning a ticket so that the cashier doesn’t have access to large amounts of money. But the best solution would be to get rid of this stupid way of funding government, once and for all.

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